{"id":1294,"date":"2010-12-14T22:48:16","date_gmt":"2010-12-14T22:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edatechforum.com\/?p=1294"},"modified":"2012-12-29T12:23:45","modified_gmt":"2012-12-29T12:23:45","slug":"beyond-pandora","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.techdesignforums.com\/practice\/technique\/beyond-pandora\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond Pandora"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/p>\n

John Landau<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

According to analysts at Screen Digest, revenue from 3D theatrical releases in North America reached $1.1bn in the first six months of 2010. This was the first time that the half-year number had exceeded the billion-dollar mark and was more than double the $430m in 3D ticket sales for the same period in 2009. Releases in 3D made up more than 20% of the region\u2019s total box office<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, cinema owners have continued to add digital\/3D screens at a fair clip. Again quoting Screen Digest, 1,650 d-cinema conversions took place in Europe during the first half of the year. This was below the 1,975 conversions in the second half of 2009 immediately before the arrival of James Cameron\u2019s blockbuster Avatar<\/em>, but still represented a major vote of confidence in 2010 offerings as diverse as Toy Story 3<\/em> and Jackass 3D<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Equally important, production budgets can now be kept to a level that makes a steady stream of 3D releases viable. Hollywood rarely confirms these numbers, but it is safe to assume that Avatar<\/em> and Toy Story 3<\/em> each cost more than $200m to make. However, in 3D or flat, even the biggest studios can produce only a few movies on that scale every year\u2014certainly not enough to keep digital screens occupied every week.<\/p>\n

Avatar<\/em>\u2019s wider importance here is that it has seeded a 3D technology market, funding the R&D needed to develop cameras, motion capture systems and tools that are now being used by other filmmakers for less cost.<\/p>\n

Resident Evil: Afterlife<\/em> is the fourth entry in an action-horror franchise that most observers thought had run its course. Instead, 3D has helped lift that installment\u2019s global box office beyond $250m on a comparatively average Hollywood budget of around $60m. Given a rule of thumb that mainstream releases cost as much to market as to make, those receipts suggest a very healthy profit\u2014and the film is only part of the way through its international run. Significantly, director Paul W.S. Anderson used the same Fusion Camera System as was used on Avatar<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Avatar<\/em> was as much as immersing you in character\u2019s emotions as its awesome action sequences<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Few people have been as close to 3D\u2019s digitally fueled renaissance as Jon Landau. He co-produced Avatar <\/em>and was with James Cameron when the director first began to feel that technology could match his artistic objectives. It is a process that dates back to 1999 and a diving excursion to Truk Lagoon, a former Japanese naval base in the Pacific Ocean.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe brought some of the then new, lightweight HD cameras to film the wrecks,\u201d Landau remembers. \u201cAnd Jim loved the experience, particularly after the pain he went through on [1989\u2019s underwater thriller] The Abyss<\/em>. Suddenly you had these very flexible, high-performance cameras that made all sorts of things possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scuba trip then connected to Cameron\u2019s first experiences with 3D, developing a theme park attraction based on The Terminator<\/em> series for the Universal Studios Tour. \u201cLooking back to that, the results had been great, but Jim had hated the process. For example, you had to use these 600lb cameras, and you had to get the stuntmen to run at half-speed because they were limited by how fast they could move the things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cameron thought if he could marry ultra-mobile digital cameras to an immersive 3D experience, he could again push the filmmaking envelope, as he had already done with Titanic<\/em> and Terminator 2: Judgment Day<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo at that stage definitely, and today still in many ways, we\u2019ve been dragging things along\u2014no question about it,\u201d says Landau. \u201cWe went to Sony and started talking to them about how we might compact that digital HD technology into a camera, get the lenses in the right configuration for 3D. In 2005, Jim and George Lucas (Star Wars<\/em>) and Bob Zemeckis (The Polar Express<\/em>) and Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings<\/em>) presented to [the cinema trade show] ShoWest and had the exhibitors look at what digital 3D could offer, how it could make it more compelling for them to invest in digital theatres.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This same pull applied to suppliers once Avatar<\/em> went before the cameras. Even before it was formally \u2018greenlit\u2019, the project\u2019s core team went through an R&D\/viability process with hardware and software companies. When shooting started for real, though, much of the 3D innovation still had to be realized in-house.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was pretty much half-and-half,\u201d says Landau. \u201cSo, for example, we used the Nvidia chips in our motion capture environment, and they had the performance that meant that Jim could look through the camera and see, in real time, a virtual representation of the digital world we\u2019d finally put on screen. But there was also a large part of building that system we had to do ourselves.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSame for the software. Our objectives would not necessarily be exactly the same as those of the technology providers\u2014and that\u2019s OK. So, we might be working with a company like Autodesk on some of their software and need that to do\u2026 let\u2019s call it a left turn. We\u2019d work together and they\u2019d take things as far as they could, but then our people had to come in and make that left turn happen. You do the custom work.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, and this goes to the idea of what\u2019s happening with those tools now, if you take, say, Autodesk\u2019s MotionBuilder [3D real-time character animation software], I think the future generations have been better because we started using it and I think they\u2019ll tell you that too.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Paul W.S. Anderson directs in 3D – with glasses<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The suppliers acknowledge exactly that. \u201cA project the size of <\/span>Avatar<\/em> is the kind of project that you are looking to learn from, and learn a lot from,\u201d says Daniel Shapiro, director of marketing at Nvidia.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another supplier was British post-production software company The Foundry. Its Nuke special effect compositing software and Ocula stereo image manipulation tools were used on Cameron\u2019s film. CEO Bill Collis has no doubt about the trickledown advantages of that.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are parts of this business where the site software licenses come with very big numbers attached to them, and we don\u2019t look to go there,\u201d he says. \u201cBut if you do want to be at a point where you can supply tools at a cost to match volume\u2014and there is a lot of 3D happening right now\u2014you are going to need to start with a big pathfinder project. You need to do your own R&D. You can\u2019t forget that. But that big project will really show you what the users want.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That is at the core of Landau\u2019s argument. \u201cI know how this might sound, but I don\u2019t think it was as much about money as it was about vision when it came to driving the technology,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was about saying not just that \u2018We want to do this,\u2019 but that \u2018We aspire to do this. We want to innovate.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Landau proclaims himself an all-the-way 3D evangelist. So, he has an answer if you confront him with the fact that although more 3D films are being made, they do tend to fall into one of three, arguably limited categories: big event titles; big family animation films; and teen horror\/comedy flicks.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYes, but that does leave out a fourth category\u2014everything else. And I\u2019m totally serious. There\u2019s no reason why you shouldn\u2019t have Woody Allen\u2019s movies in 3D, or My Dinner with Andr\u00e9<\/em>. Woody Allen is a good example\u2014think, does he have a stereo soundtrack? In his films now he does\u2014he didn\u2019t always, but he does now\u2014and that\u2019s because it helps to make it more engaging and it doesn\u2019t stand out and distract you,\u201d Landau says.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo with 3D, you can have the movies where things are popping out all the time. That isn\u2019t what makes it an exciting format though. It\u2019s always got to be about the storytelling. One of my favorite scenes in Avatar<\/em> is when Neytiri throws Jake out of hometree and you are put right there with them, with the drama. You can do that for any kind of genuinely dramatically engaging filmmaking. That\u2019s the real potential in 3D.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we say is that 3D has to be a window into a world and not a world coming out of a window.\u201d To get to that point, Landau says that you need to look at the context.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first thing is that there is a big jump going on here, but it\u2019s not from 2D to 3D. The big jump is in going from film to digital\u2014that\u2019s what people need to get familiar with, and familiar with all that it means. It includes the quality of 3D experience we can now offer, but it doesn\u2019t stop there,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce you can shoot digitally, when you have the skills to paint with light in a digital environment, I maybe shouldn\u2019t say this, but the move to 3D isn\u2019t that hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Avatar<\/em>\u2019s future, Landau adds that the purely digital elements may be more important when it comes to a sequel than having ascended the 3D learning curve, especially in terms of controlling any sequel\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause what we have now is this amazing infrastructure,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019ve got this digital world and these digital characters and that is going to make anything we do going forward a lot more efficient and cost-effective.\u201d<\/p>\n

This feeds into another part of Landau\u2019s broader sales pitch for 3D: understanding the real cost. \u201cThis idea that the post-production costs will kill you\u2014it\u2019s a misnomer. We edited in 2D. We mixed in 2D. The only thing that we did in 3D was color timing\u2014color timing and mastering. That is a small percentage of added cost.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe workflow is not as disrupted as some people suggest. And, if you are talking about digital production, a lot of that software is now pretty mature.\u201d Landau further notes that 3D budgets can vary significantly according to the project, but there are also clear rules that allow you to control them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe premium for 3D is a little bit like a bell curve,\u201d he says. \u201cAt the bottom of the bell curve, it\u2019s something that\u2019s all live action, so there\u2019s little or no impact. Then, when you start mixing CG [computer generated imagery] and live action, you go up toward the top of the bell curve. But finally as you go all CG, where you have a lot of animation, then you\u2019re back down toward the bottom.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This last point also leads Landau to express some surprise over TV\u2019s edginess about 3D, where mainstream broadcasters are resisting the move.<\/p>\n

\u201cSay you did do a documentary like Planet Earth<\/em> for 3D. OK, so a documentary is mostly all on the live action side, so the additional cost is mostly in the camera package and in the finishing cost. It\u2019s down on one of the lower sides of the bell curve. And also, you can argue that the extra cost can be easily made up in those situations by potential added revenue,\u201d says Landau.<\/p>\n

Moviegoers this time might have accepted 3D as a fixture\u2014although one has to suspect that its ubiquity will be a subject for debate for a good few years yet. More to the point, Landau acknowledges that technological challenges remain.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of them are 3D-specific, some are digital. It\u2019s things like variable speeds, being able to adjust the light levels and the depth of field. It\u2019s being able to hold the whites better if, say, you\u2019re shooting up in the Antarctic. Digital responds different than film does right now. That is kind of what a filmmaker would say,\u201d Landau notes.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut then look at how far digital, just digital has come. Not just Avatar<\/em>. Take a couple of 2D movies like [The Curious Case of] Benjamin Button<\/em> and Public Enemies<\/em>. Period movies. Visually very complex movies. Both shot digitally but I don\u2019t think that the typical audience really noticed. However, that also shows you the obligation on us as filmmakers\u2014there\u2019s a temptation in that to become complacent, to stop innovating. If we do let that happen, we\u2019ll suffer for it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

At the same time, one of the biggest goals may lie more simply in getting 3D technology into the hands of John Q. Public. \u201cI actually think that\u2019s when some interesting things really will start to happen\u2014when you can get a 3D-capable camcorder for consumers. We were a long time in the chicken-and-egg situation for cinema. \u2018Do we need the content first or the theatres?\u2019 You can see the same happening in TV right now\u2014and that reminds you that this is going to be a process, not an overnight thing,\u201d says Landau.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBut think about what happens when you\u2019re Skyping grandma in 3D. If we get to the point where people are looking at this technology not simply as an audience, but to use it themselves\u2014baby\u2019s first steps in 3D\u2014then it\u2019s heading for omnipresent, for omnipotent.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Landau According to analysts at Screen Digest, revenue from 3D theatrical releases in North America reached $1.1bn in the first six months of 2010. This was the first time that the half-year number had exceeded the billion-dollar mark and was more than double the $430m in 3D ticket sales for the same period in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":1296,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[814,1241],"tags":[575,860],"coauthors":[51],"class_list":["post-1294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-december-2010","category-user-interface","tag-3d-tv","tag-john-landau","workflow-historical","workflow-interview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techdesignforums.com\/practice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techdesignforums.com\/practice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techdesignforums.com\/practice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techdesignforums.com\/practice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/138"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techdesignforums.com\/practice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.techdesignforums.com\/practice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techdesignforums.com\/practice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techdesignforums.com\/practice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techdesignforums.com\/practice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techdesignforums.com\/practice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1294"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techdesignforums.com\/practice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}